


Into That Good Night

by lethifolde



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Order of the Phoenix AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 05:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4209585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lethifolde/pseuds/lethifolde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius was never allowed to fight in the Department of Mysteries, and with Harry on the run, he and Remus are left at Grimmauld Place, teaching each other how to survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into That Good Night

“You’re going to kill yourself, you know,” Remus says, settling into his usual seat at the end of the dining table. He peers at a copy of _The Evening Prophet_ , pages sprawled out in front of him. Pictures of escaped Death Eaters litter the pages, decorating the barely concealed lies printed on parchment. Someone has gone through with a quill and circled most of the mistruths, dotted notes through the margin. A particularly artistic moustache has been drawn on a picture of Bellatrix Lestrange in red ink, and her eyes burned out with what Remus knows to be the butt of a cigarette.

“Thought about it,” Sirius says, and sucks on the end of his cigarette for a moment. When he exhales, his lips form a careful ‘O’ and the smoke curls into a cloud. The tip of the cigarette glows orange, delicate, the only light in the room. Neither of them bothers with candles or a _Lumos_. They never do. “But then what would you do without me?”

“It’s likely I’d sleep a lot better,” he says, wondering if he should take up smoking if only to give himself something to do when they meet like this in the kitchen, the house silent after midnight, stolen hours before dawn. The rest of the Order is asleep upstairs, respite from what each new day brings, and he cannot recall the last time he slept through a whole night. “I spend enough time worrying about Harry. Worrying about you just about sends me around the twist.”

“Why else do you think I’m always up at three o’clock in the sodding morning?” Sirius asks. He takes a final drag on his cigarette, putting it out on his cousin’s portrait. Bellatrix screams, ashen, from behind a few barely lit embers. Sirius doesn’t pause, pulling a packet out from under the newspaper and lighting another with the tip of his wand. “Put some coffee on, would you?”

“I thought tea would be a better option,” Remus says, but he sets about preparing the French press anyway, tucking spoons into the pocket of his dressing gown when he carries it all across to the table. “Though I suppose you’re not planning on getting any more sleep tonight.”

“Why bother?” Sirius asks.

And it’s a fair enough question, because Remus knows his best friend still wakes up screaming, his body coated in a thick layer of sweat, the sheets stained and soaked. Sometimes it’s James. Other times, Lily. Occasionally it’s Harry or even Remus himself. There’s normally green light, laughter, and that cold which comes creeping in around the Dementors, the one Sirius has never quite warmed up from. Remus knows this because he wakes from the same dreams, too, knowing Sirius is sitting in the kitchen below, waiting. It happens every night, has done since they moved into Grimmauld permanently, wasting the morning hours in near silence.

“I wonder if they’ll be able to send messages by Christmas,” Remus says, not really to Sirius, not even to himself. As autumn settles in, the festive season plays on his mind, and he knows communication is unlikely. Sirius backs his doubt up with an inelegant snort.

“Always the optimist, Moony,” he says.

“Someone has to be.”

“Why bother?” Sirius asks again. From the glow of his cigarette, he could be decades younger, no lines or greying temples. Almost like the Sirius that he first knew. But Remus knows that in daylight or moonlight or any real light, they are both haggard and worn out. He is scarred, Sirius is tattooed, and it’s all the same thing, really. Both left to wear their sins etched into their skin. “I suppose they might, though.”

Remus has almost forgotten what they were talking about but comes back to the conversation with a jolt. These futile imaginings are a welcome escape. “I don’t suppose it’ll all be over by then, but it would be nice to hear something. Not that they would have access to an owl.”

“Unlikely,” Sirius says. “Though, I sent Harry a toucan once in his fourth year. Well, not an _actual_ toucan, but close enough. Bloody thing would barely hold still long enough for me to put the note on its leg.”

“I do hope they’re not far enough south for toucans,” Remus comments. “Ron’s skin would burn up something fierce.”

And then, for a moment or maybe two, it’s as though they are young again, laughing quietly like they used to in the dormitories at Hogwarts, not enough to wake their peers. It is thirty seconds of freedom and light before Sirius becomes quiet, his cigarette forgotten and a long line of ash left on the table.

Remus looks up at him. “He’ll be fine, Padfoot,” Remus says. “He always is.”

* * *

Halloween arrives as it always does, full of roasted chestnuts and fresh nightmares.

Remus wakes because he could swear there is someone laughing in his room, high pitched and cruel. But when his eyes struggle open and he is peering into the empty black, there is no one laughing, no one at all but him in the room. He manages to roll over far enough to heave up what Molly had cooked for dinner onto to floorboards, body trembling and sweating.

He fumbles for his wand, eyes squeezed closed again, and vanishes the mess. The stench remains, enough to make him gag, force him from bed and out of the room. His feet recoil against icy floorboards but he carries on, avoiding the creaky stair on his way down to the kitchen.

Sirius is already there, his ashtray well populated, and Remus can make out Padfoot’s trembling shoulders in the dim moonlight.

“I fucking hate this,” Sirius says, tapping the ash from the end of his cigarette into the tray. His face is wet and Remus’ is, too, he thinks.

“I know,” Remus says, because there’s nothing else left. “Coffee?”

“Whiskey.”

Remus collects the last unopened bottle from the liquor cabinet, two glasses from the sideboard. He sits across from Sirius, shivering now that the sweat has cooled on his skin, wondering if lighting a fire would break everything. They have become so content with the darkness, anything else an intrusion.

Three o’clock comes, alcohol in his veins lulling him into security. It’s that time of morning when he never knows if it is worth trying for more sleep, wondering if he will feel worse for it in the morning when the house clatters to life. But Sirius’ silence is smothering, half the bottle gone, and Remus stands just to break it. The quiet drips away with his footsteps and he pauses at the doorway.

“I’m going back to bed,” he says. The invitation dies in his throat, though he could do with the warmth and the company, but it is something they haven’t done in too many years. Sirius makes no move towards him. “I’ll see you at a more human hour, I suppose.”

Padfoot nods and Remus continues to leave, door kept open, moonlight spilling across the kitchen floor. He leaves his bedroom door open, too, settling back under the blankets with wide eyes opened, staring at the ceiling. The smell from before has dissipated and he warms up quickly beneath the sheets, settling in as the creaky stair sounds and Sirius’ shadow darkens the doorway.

When he hops under the cover, they don’t touch, but Remus is painfully aware of Sirius’ body heat radiating in the space between him. He itches to reach out, struggling to remember the last time someone, anyone, touched him.

“Do you ever think it could’ve been easier?” Sirius asks, voice quiet. “If none of us had become friends.”

“I’m a werewolf, Padfoot,” Remus reminds him. “The War was never going to be easy on me.”

“But think about it,” Sirius says. “You could have been married. Had a litter of kids with some woman. Hell, it could even have been my cousin.”

Remus doesn’t say it but his heart aches at the mention of Tonks, even if their something had only lasted a month before Bellatrix got to her.

“I would never have known her if I didn’t know you,” Remus says and he hears Sirius’ noisy exhale.

Silence follows for a few minutes and he would have thought Sirius to be asleep were it not for the short, shallow breaths coming from next to him. Remus remembers too many sleepless nights like this, side by side.

“Remember when you saw that house in Wales you liked?” Sirius asks and it’s only a small reminder but it is enough to take Remus back to a rainy Saturday afternoon a few lifetimes earlier. In his apartment, a property circled in the real estate section of _The Daily Prophet_ , his scribbled sums in the margin of the page and Sirius’ hand on his shoulder, mentioning there would be room in the yard for Harry to fly. “We should have bought it. We should have left.”

Closing his eyes, Remus sees wide fields and a slow moving river. “What good would that have done?” he asks. “Leaving James and Lily here?”

“What good did having us around do?” Sirius asks.

He doesn’t want to respond, wipes his cheeks on his pillow as he turns away from Padfoot. As he pretends to sleep, he tries not to think of those last few months, of packed boxes and tense silences between them, and instead tries to think of what could have been.

When he wakes, it is after nine and their bodies are tangled, legs knotting and Remus’ arm across Sirius chest, keeping him close. Safe, warm, familiar. Rainy morning light filters through the window, and in sleep Sirius looks smoother, younger, more like the man he had been in those earlier years.

* * *

Christmas comes without any news, though they had long since accepted the silence. Sirius climbs into his bed early on Christmas morning, before even the most eager of children will be awake to unwrap their gifts. This time, Remus reaches across the gap.

They tie themselves together before sleep washes back over them.

* * *

By late March, the world is beginning to defrost.

Remus takes to _Potterwatch_ , setting up equipment in the kitchen. Sirius sits and smokes whilst Remus broadcasts, doesn’t say a word. Fred does most of the talking, sneaking a cigarette or two from Sirius’ packet if his mother isn’t in the room, whilst Lee manages all the technical issues from the corner.

Marauders of their own, Fred and Lee look years older than they are, pushing mid-twenties on their better days. Remus wonders if that’s how he and Sirius used to look before Everything, tired eyes and shaking hands and still smiling, foolishly, not knowing the worst was yet to come.

* * *

One night, just on the cusp of April, Remus wakes to a scream from two floors up. He is quick to his feet, moving before his brain catches up, and takes the stairs two at a time. He is panting and out of breath when he breaks down Sirius’ door, body worn from a full moon the night before. Sirius is thrashing and screaming and tangling himself in the sheets.

Remus crosses the room in two steps, pulls Sirius close, holds him to his chest when he wakes and stays silent as his shirt soaks with salt water.

From then, they give up their pretence. Few people are coming to stay anymore, and the house is heavy with Remus and Sirius and the portraits of the dead. On the rare occasion they have a visitor, Sirius will just make up an excuse five minutes after Remus has turned in, joining him in Remus’ bed where they fall asleep not touching, only to wake up to their usual mismatch of limbs.

During the day, they don’t touch, don’t talk about it, don’t talk about anything much at all. All that is left to speak of is the growing list of their dead friends, new reports coming in each day over _Potterwatch_ , now run from scattered locations across the countryside. Sirius is still a fugitive, Remus is the same but of a different sort, and neither know what more they can do with themselves.

So they spend most of their time in the library, filtering through the books that have been left to Sirius, removing curses and hexes as they go. Sirius tears out the pages with the spells and potions that nobody should ever know, the ones that too many people know, throwing the scrunched up pieces of paper onto the fire. Eventually, he gives up on tearing out pages and just throws the whole lot of them into the hearth. It’s the first time Remus has seen him smile outside the bedroom in months.

When the last of the books have been burned, smoke from the chimney as spring settles in, an owl arrives at the window. Nondescript with the smallest piece of parchment tied to its foot, and Sirius is out of his chair before the owl has even signalled its arrival. The bird doesn’t wait for a reply or treats, just shoots back into the clear sky when Sirius has pulled the note free:

_Alive_.

* * *

On the first of May, neither can sleep.

Sirius gives up first, throwing back the blankets on their bed and pacing around the room. Remus watches him fume, propped up on one elbow. Almost perfectly between two full moons, he is as relaxed as ever as Sirius threatens to tear the room apart. Since Harry’s note, they’ve both been on high alert, Remus only leaving to fetch groceries once a week, afraid to leave Sirius alone for more than an hour.

The night has heaviness to it, dewiness in the stars that blink lazily from the blackness above. Just as Sirius looks like he is going to wear a hole right through the floorboards, a silvery orb breaks through the inkiness, transfiguring into a lynx on arrival, Kingsley’s voice deep.

“It is happening. Come to the Hog’s Head. Both of you.”

Remus expects fear. Sadness, even. But Sirius just whoops and pulls fresh robes out of the wardrobe, fishes a tie out from a disused drawer. Remus watches, wondering when exactly Sirius’ clothes had made their way into his dresser.

“We’re going into battle and you’re wearing new robes and a tie?” Remus asks, absently reaching for the trousers and sweater he had been wearing earlier. It is an outfit Padfoot and Prongs had used to call his ‘hot librarian ensemble,’ a phrase Padfoot would always accompany with a wink. “You haven’t worn a tie in years.”

Sirius throws the piece of fabric at him and Remus turns it over in his hands, smooth red silk. There’s a small label attached, sewn on just below the brand name in a familiar embroidery. _J & L_.

“Help me do it up, would you?” Sirius asks. “You know I’ve always been pants at it.”

Remus smooths the silk between his fingers as he crosses the room, standing close enough to feel Sirius’ breath on his face. His fingers shake like they always do and it takes him a couple of attempts before the knot is perfect.

“It’s going to be different this time. I can feel it,” Sirius says, pressing a palm to Remus’ cheek. When he grins, the light even reaches his eyes. “Let’s go save our godson, Moony.”

When they apparate to the Hog’s Head, it’s busier than Remus can ever remember. Kingsley embraces them both, sending them their way up a familiar tunnel.

“Just like old times,” Sirius says over his shoulder and somehow it is all too similar when he beams at him. “Personally, I always preferred the Honeydukes passage. I always lifted a few Sugar Quills for you, remember?”

Remus hits his head on the low ceiling, winces. “Best not let Kingsley hear you say that, Padfoot. Wouldn’t want you on trial just after you get acquitted.”

He tries to pretend that they are back in school, when there was that pale sheet of fear over everything but they were still children, still in love and laughing and full of so much light. When they reach the end of the tunnel, there’s a flash of red hair and he could almost swear it is Lily and not Ginny who helps him out of the tunnel, directs them to where they need to be. Sirius holds him tight, old times, his breath hot across Remus’ ear before the warmth is gone and they are out the door.

And then, the end.

* * *

The dust has yet to settle but people are cheering anyway, ignoring the dead around them and the blood smeared on the walls. Staggering against a doorframe, Remus hears a howl from someone in a mask before the wands begin to drop. A cowards surrender, he thinks.

He peers through the dust, past the injured and the triumphant, searching for one face as he turns over bodies and wipes blood off the face of corpses on his way to the Hall where everyone waits for the survivors, waits for the dead.

On a wall about a hundred meters away, the stone threatening to crumble and collapse, he sees a familiar red tie. Sirius is slumped forward, unmoving and face concealed by blood. There’s a short moment where he thinks maybe he should lift his wand and just end it there because even if they have won the war, what is the point, and then Sirius’ chest rises, falls, and Remus’ wand arm drops. Sirius looks up, bloodstained, and the red splits when he smiles.

Remus is running and running, wand clattering on the stone floor before he reaches him, falling to his knees, arms tight around Sirius. A sob tears out of a throat and he isn’t sure if it is his or Sirius’. Remus inhales, noisy and pained, breathing in the sweat and the dirt and the safety. He moves back, looking down, and Sirius’ hands are on his face, grey eyes examining, bright.

“Alright, Moony?” he asks, smooths a piece of hair off Remus’ forehead, hands just as bloodied as his face.

“Better off than you, I’d say,” Remus says, hands on Padfoot’s cheeks, committing everything he touches to memory. He helps Sirius to his feet, hauls him towards the swelling noise of the Great Hall, Sirius’ feet skittering on the stone floors, scrambling for grip. Everyone is too fatigued to notice another two survivors, the grime rendering them almost unrecognisable, until Remus hears someone calling them and they turn.

Harry is running at them and somehow Padfoot finds it within him to stand by himself, and Remus thinks Sirius might be knocked off his feet when Harry hugs him. Then Harry is in his arms and they are all still standing and Sirius, shaking and bloodied, is still smiling bright under so much red.

“I’ll come and find you in a bit, okay?” Harry says, and Remus thinks of how he looks so much like James, hair longer than he has ever seen it, and he really doesn’t want to let him go but he still does.

“Think we could get someone to patch me up, Moony?” Sirius asks, and Remus sees he is pale under all that blood but still grinning with a glint in his eye that could charm even Madame Pince out of her knickers. “Wouldn’t do to have me cark it now.”

He leans heavily against Remus, an arm around his shoulders as they seek out help. His body is still radiating warmth through the now tattered robes, though his tie remains untouched, and Remus holds him up, holds him close, as they pick their way through the chaos. There is still a line for the Healers, for anyone who has more than a rudimentary knowledge of first aid, and they both know Sirius is not a priority case but Remus’ gut churns nonetheless.

They join the end of the queue and Sirius struggles but turns to face him, staring up at him. Remus stares back for a moment, until it is lips on lips and no one around them seems surprised or no one seems to care. He tastes rust, salt, whiskey, home, and hopes his unshaven face isn’t a bother before he comes to his senses, tangles his hands in Sirius’ hair and kisses him back. They are holding each other up, now, Sirius too weak and Remus unsure of how to stand anymore.

Sirius breaks it off when the line starts to move, keeping his arm tight around Remus, this time around his waist. Over the noise from the survivors, he leans close, lips against the shell of Remus’ ear.

“I suppose we should buy that house now, Moony.”


End file.
